Deconstructing the Indictment

[dweller]

By Stirling Newberry

For the last two years, Federal Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has investigated a potential crime, namely the revealing to the general public that Valerie Wilson
nee Plame worked for the CIA in counter-proliferation, and was an undercover agent. To charge someone with a crime at the Federal level requires an
indictment - a summary of allegations and facts which show that there is probable reason to believe that a crime was committed, and that a particular
individual should be charged with that crime and prosecuted. It is part of the safeguards of our judicial system that prosecutors are not able to charge by
themselves, but have three forms of oversight. First, they work for the public, directly or indirectly. Second, the process is overseen by a judge, and approval is
needed along the way for warrants and subpoenas power. Most importantly, they must convince a body of citizens, the grand jury, that there is probable
cause a crime has been committed, and that a particular individual or group of individuals should face criminal charges.

At 2:00 PM Eastern Standard Time today Fitzgerald all but declared his investigatory phase over, and that his office was entering into a new phase, where
Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, has been charged with a crime, and must be tried. It is tempting to speculate on what this means,
what the fallout will be, and where the direction goes from here. But first, it is important to capture the staggering statements made in the indictment, and what
they reveal. While partisans will attempt to spin this in one direction or another, the fact is that a five-count indictment on felony charges rests on a theory of
what took place that goes far beyond what Scooter Libby did or said. That the indictment is so carefully prepared, and carefully does not draw implications,
nor does it include extraneous information, makes what it does include all the more interesting, and potentially damning.

But let us look with "the four corners of the indictment" first. The timeline set forth by the indictment is this. In the 2003 State of the Union address, George
Bush uttered the by now famous "Sixteen Words," claiming that Saddam had attempted to get uranium illegally from Niger. In May of 2003, that story began
to unravel, as press accounts came to the fore which questioned the Niger Yellowcake story.

In June of 2003, the timeline grows dense. On or about the 11th and 12th of June, Scooter Libby was involved in a flurry of activity trying to track down how
it came to be that Ambassador Wilson was sent to Niger on a fact-finding trip, and why he was telling the press, at first on background and later for attribution,
that by the time of the State of the Union address, the Niger story was already known to be false by the administration. Or, in simple terms, Wilson claimed
that long before Bush uttered the 16 words, it was known that there was no evidence for them, and that they were, in sum, a lie.


much more
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/102805Q.shtml


dp

[texpatriot2004]

1. Thanks for this info on the indictment. nm